Package: lintian Version: 2.5.41 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
In one of my packages, lintian reported a spelling error 'homogenous' which should be fixed to 'homogeneous'. Not being a native English speaker, I trusted lintian, created a patch and submitted it upstream, only to get a reply: > My dictionary (American Heritage) says 'homogenous' is an acceptable spelling > of 'homogeneous', and it's how I pronounce the word. So I did a quick check, and Merriam-Webster [1] seems to allow the 'homogenous' spelling as well. Other sources [2] even suggest that 'homogenous' is the de-facto spelling of the word, while the Online Etymology Dictionary - which according to [3] suggested that this is an 'erroneous spelling of "homogeneous"' - claims in it's current edition [4] that it is 'a spelling of "homogeneous" that represents a common pronunciation' (thus accepting the spelling). I would therefore suggest to consider 'homogenous' to be a false positive and drop it from the lintian database. [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homogenous [2] http://grammarist.com/usage/homogenous-homogeneous/ [3] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/homogenous [4] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=homogenous -- System Information: Debian Release: stretch/sid APT prefers testing-updates APT policy: (500, 'testing-updates'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=de_AT.utf8, LC_CTYPE=de_AT.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages lintian depends on: ii binutils 2.26-5 ii bzip2 1.0.6-8 ii diffstat 1.61-1 ii file 1:5.25-2 ii gettext 0.19.7-2 ii hardening-includes 2.8+nmu2 ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.4 ii libapt-pkg-perl 0.1.29+b5 ii libarchive-zip-perl 1.56-2 ii libclass-accessor-perl 0.34-1 ii libclone-perl 0.38-1+b1 ii libdpkg-perl 1.18.4 ii libemail-valid-perl 1.198-1 ii libfile-basedir-perl 0.07-1 ii libipc-run-perl 0.94-1 ii liblist-moreutils-perl 0.413-1+b1 ii libparse-debianchangelog-perl 1.2.0-8 ii libperl5.22 [libdigest-sha-perl] 5.22.1-8 ii libtext-levenshtein-perl 0.13-1 ii libtimedate-perl 2.3000-2 ii liburi-perl 1.71-1 ii libyaml-libyaml-perl 0.41-6+b1 ii man-db 2.7.5-1 ii patchutils 0.3.4-1 ii perl 5.22.1-8 ii t1utils 1.39-2 ii xz-utils 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2.1 Versions of packages lintian recommends: ii dpkg 1.18.4 ii libperlio-gzip-perl 0.19-1+b1 ii perl 5.22.1-8 ii perl-modules-5.22 [libautodie-perl] 5.22.1-8 Versions of packages lintian suggests: pn binutils-multiarch <none> ii dpkg-dev 1.18.4 ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.72-1 ii libtext-template-perl 1.46-1 -- no debconf information